Boris Johnson may or may not be out, but the system is definitely down

The UK newspaper front pages in London this week. EPA

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s reign of error looks to be almost over. Everyone knows why. Even Mr Johnson himself is coming to understand that he is an embarrassment to himself, to his party and his country. What is unknown is whether he will quit or be forced out, and when.

The Conservative party has now produced its third failed leader since the Brexit vote of 2016. Party members need to consider why David Cameron, Theresa May and now Mr Johnson have all been destroyed during the Brexit mess in a little more than five years. To lose one leader is unfortunate. To lose two is careless. To lose three is profound systemic political failure.

True, Mr Johnson may cling on for some time. He is said to be planning to dismiss his staff but that will be like a scandal-prone aristocrat getting into trouble and firing his servants. The real problem with these successive Conservative leadership failures is not Mr Johnson himself. It is that a party obsessed with Brexit cannot make it work. In desperation, Conservatives allowed someone clearly unsuited to high office to rise to the top. This matters because the same system that chose Mr Cameron, Mrs May and Mr Johnson may well choose their fourth failure in a row.

It’s true that Mr Johnson has been a very particular failure. He became Conservative leader and Prime Minister precisely because he was a “mould-breaker” who would bend the rules to “get Brexit done". That was half right. He did break or bend rules on coronavirus, with party cronies and on other matters, but he has clearly failed to get Brexit “done".

July 2019: Queen Elizabeth II invites Boris Johnson, as Britain's new Prime Minister, to form a government after his resounding victory in the Conservative Party's leadership election.

August 2019: Then-US president Donald Trump and Boris Johnson attend a bilateral meeting during the G7 summit in Biarritz, France. The pair exchanged warm words despite vast differences in their positions on geopolitics and global trade.

November 2019: Boris Johnson poses for a photo wearing boxing gloves emblazoned with ‘Get Brexit Done' during a stop on his general election campaign trail in Manchester.

December 2019: Boris Johnson and his partner Carrie Symonds enter Downing Street as the Conservatives celebrate a sweeping UK general election victory.

January 2020: Five years since David Cameron announced he was calling a referendum on the UK leaving the EU, known as Brexit, Mr Johnson holds the reins of power as the country hands back its membership and is cut adrift from the European bloc.

February 2020: Boris Johnson finalises his divorce deal with his estranged wife Marina Wheeler after a year-long financial dispute. It paves the way for marriage to his partner Carrie Symonds. The couple announce they are engaged and are expecting a baby.

March 2020: Everything changes as the coronavirus pandemic envelopes the world. Boris Johnson orders a national lockdown with families told to stay in their homes in all bar exceptional circumstances. Non-essential shops are also shut and events such as weddings and funerals suspended. It is the biggest shutdown in Britain’s history.

March 2020: Mr Johnson begins a series of sombre press conferences at which he warns many people will die from coronavirus. He says the country faces the worst public health crisis for a generation. He urges people to work from home and stay away from pubs, restaurants and other social gatherings.

March 2020: Mr Johnson takes part in the first 'Clap for Carers', a weekly round of applause for National Health Service staff that brings the nation out on their doorsteps to acknowledge the workers putting their lives at risk on the front line in the battle against coronavirus. He is soon in need of their assistance as he tests positive for Covid and is hospitalised.

April 2020.: From near death to nappy duty! In a rattling change of fortunes, Mr Johnson and his partner Carrie reveal the birth of their son. It is Carrie’s first child but thought to be Boris’s fifth child. Surprisingly, the PM has never confirmed exactly how many children he has through a series of relationships. The boy is named Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson, in a tribute to their grandfathers and the doctors who treated the prime minister in hospital.

June 2020: Boris Johnson visits M&S clothing department and other retail outlets in Westfield Stratford, London, as the first lockdown restrictions ease.

July 2020: The public get their first real glimpse of Wilfred as he is cuddled by Carrie on a Zoom call to thank University College Hospital staff who helped with the birth.

October 2020: The UK orders a string of local lockdowns as Mr Johnson tries to regain control of the second wave without forcing the entire country back into hibernation.

November 2020: Mr Johnson orders a new national lockdown after weeks of costly dithering and the failure of tiered restrictions to stem the spread of the virus.

January 2021: Despite the pandemic's third wave, a glimmer of light is presented in the shape of the UK's burgeoning vaccination programme. Here, Mr Johnson visits a mobile vaccination centre at Barnet FC's ground at The Hive, north London.

March 2021: Mr Johnson gives a thumbs-up gesture after receiving his first dose of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine at St Thomas' Hospital in London.

April 2021: Boris Johnson is embroiled in a furore over who paid for his flat at 11 Downing Street to be refurbished, with wife Carrie Symonds alleged as to have derided its John Lewis decor. Here, Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer attempts to make political capital out of the incident at a John Lewis in Manchester.

May 2021: Boris Johnson poses with his wife Carrie Johnson in the garden of No 10 Downing Street after their secret wedding at Westminster Cathedral.

May 2021: Boris Johnson visits Hartlepool after the Conservative Party candidate Jill Mortimer won the Hartlepool Parliamentary by-election. Ms Mortimer won with 51.9 per cent of the vote, marking a significant victory for Mr Johnson's Tories as Hartlepool was traditionally a Labour stronghold.

May 2021: Erstwhile chief adviser turned fiercest critic Dominic Cummings delivers damming evidence to UK politicians regarding Boris Johnson and his government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

June 2021: The Prime Minister and his new wife Carrie Johnson walk with US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden in Cornwall where the UK hosted the G7 Summit.

July 2021: Boris and Carrie Johnson attend the UEFA Euro 2020 semi-final between England and Denmark at Wembley in July. The match ends in victory for the hosts but success in a major tournament final proves elusive as England are beaten by Italy on penalties. The Prime Minister received criticism from some quarters for wearing an England football shirt over his usual shirt and tie.

He is still trying to refashion the agreement his team negotiated on Northern Ireland, and the Brexit mess and subsequent trade deals have managed to irritate an almost endless list of British citizens and interest groups. Farmers, fishermen, truck drivers, transport workers, food processors, musicians, various exporters and importers, and just ordinary citizens trying to go on holiday, have all noticed that Brexit now directly affects them by making their lives more difficult without any obvious benefit.

When Brexit advocates are asked to list the supposed Brexit benefits, they waffle, muttering abstractions about “sovereignty” and “taking back control". The other supposed positive part of Mr Johnson’s time in office is that his personal popularity won his Conservative party an 80-seat majority in Parliament. The truth, as the veteran pollster and political writer Peter Kellner noted, is that Mr Johnson has never been popular with the electorate. His 2019 election victory came because the then Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn was even more unpopular. Voters held their noses and voted for Mr Johnson as the lesser of two evils. Mr Kellner wrote: “Johnson’s party needs to jettison the notion that he is some kind of vote-winning genius. He is no such thing, and has never been during his time in Downing Street.”

The sad part is that under Mr Johnson, our United Kingdom is anything but united and our reputation in the world is much diminished. Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are pulling in different ways from the Westminster administration in England. And it is all so predictable.

Last week, I met a well-known Conservative politician and former Cabinet minister, who told me that if anyone had suggested 20 years ago that Mr Johnson would become an MP, never mind Prime Minister, he would have assumed they were mad. Anyone who knew Mr Johnson, the politician said, recognised he was shallow, untrustworthy and has very poor judgement – characteristics that have become obvious to the entire world over the past few days.

But that brings us back to the flaws within the British political system that facilitated his rise and which may, in the end, prevent his immediate fall.

The Johnson strategy has been to set up an inquiry into the boozy parties in Downing Street. This inquiry is led by a civil servant. But civil servants, by definition, work for the prime minister. And the prime minister is the only person who can decide on the basis of the inquiry whether he has broken the ministerial code, making him judge and jury in his own case.

The only people who can, therefore, effectively remove Mr Johnson are his own MPs, but they are the ones who helped put him in power in the first place. Even if he is to be forced out, his successor will be chosen by those same MPs and party members who have now given us three failed Conservative prime ministers.

Will a fourth Conservative leader in five years be able to “get Brexit done”? Will he or she be able to end the scandalous Johnson years and restore faith in the union to rebuild Britain’s image abroad? To do that any future leader will also have to recognise that while Mr Johnson is the cause of many problems, the fact that the system of governance allowed such a person to reach Downing Street is the key symptom of what has gone wrong.